Spiderweb Games - Avernum 2: Crystal Souls

[Kordanor]

There is the graphical thing, but he also needs to redo his combat model. Combat in a game should be meaningful, quick, or fun. Almost none of the fights fit anywhere there, since Jeff puts an unholy slog worth of trash mobs everywhere. He even wrote about he was guilty of doing it, and then maybe cut back 5%. It takes the wind out of his games, and I don't think I could ever play another.

I disagre there because of exactly the reason Carnifex mentioned. I played Avadon, Avadon 2 and Avernum on Insane and had lots of fun with the combat because it was really, really challenging. I don't mind lots of mobs if most of these fights offer a great challenge.

One doesn't mess with perfection. Sounds in a game mean nothing to me as that is one of the first things I disable anyways. I love the Spiderweb games, whenever I get a new one I know I'm in for almost a solid month's worth of entertainment. Best of all, when you fire these games up on hard, you're in for an actual challenge most of the time.

I agree on the challenge part as mentioned above, but I disagree about the sound.
I think it's quite important to have a minimum of quality in sound. Spiderweb games do not feature any music, the sound effects are bad but at least they exist and the "soundquality" (not the quality of the sound effect if that makes sense) is ok. The loops however are horrible (like chatter in town, wind noises in a cave) and so on. I think in that regards there is lots of room for improvement.
The cool thing ist that this improvement wouldn't even cost lots of money. For a couple of thousands bucks you would have music/soundeffects/loops which are still not good, but acceptable. Thing is, that Jeff is not taking any risks. It's money he needs to pay up front and he doesn't want to need to earn this additional money by selling the game. That's why he should do a kickstarter campaign as I mentioned a couple of times before. People would happily throw additional money at him for implementing this stuff, which would eliminate any additional risk.

 

[HiddenX]

So this a remake of a remake? I already played these games twice, so I pass on this one.

 

[Kordanor]

Yep it is. As far as I know he is also adding a couple of stuff. But I am with you. Also wouldn't play a remake of Baldurs Gate or another game I already finished.
In case of Avernum 2 - only know spiderweb since Avadon 1 and as I knew Avernum 2 will come, I never checked out the older ones.